Cathy's Art Diary

Great weekend doing about 50 of the Brighton artists’ open houses ! We do rather go into train spotter mode when we get going. We did almost all of the Fiveways Group houses, most of the Ditchling ones and a splattering of independents which happened to fall in those areas. We saw super pictures, wonderful ceramics, fascinating jewellery, great textiles particularly those by St Jude’s, hats, clothes and much much more! I think my highlight so far has been the Revelation pictures by Annelies Clarke at St John the Evangelist Church. This built on her show there last year and included wonderful female representations of cities mentioned in the book. These are really fine and thoughtful pictures. My main purchase, see the poor photo, were two bowls by Tanya Gomez although some cheap earrings were acquired as well in another house.

Installation at the Curve gallery at the Barbican by the London-based art practice United Visual Artists. OK I confess I feel a bit of a fraud reviewing this as I found it too dark and didn’t venture down the steps and just viewed it from the top! Looking at the reviews I realise I missed a lot as there were 12 pendulums and I only saw two! Yes I know I’m a wimp! I did like the effect of the pendulum lights and how the different rhythms and intensity created new light shapes in the dark. It was very beautiful just very dark! Review Evening Standard  

Lovely selling exhibition of modern jewellery at the Barbican. There were about 10 cases of beautifully tempting work by 23 jewellers. I loved Sarah Herriot’s sculptured work which made your eyes see different shapes as well as Jo McAllister’s plain textured work. Jan Truman had bright designs in a net design and Christine Kaltoft had delicate wire work. My favourite pieces were Petra Bishai’s paperclip cuff links.   

Sexy exhibition at the Barbican looking at the work of the designer John Paul Gaultier. This is a brilliantly designed exhibition and worth seeing just for the way it is set out and the amazing mannequins with live faces. I found these a bit spooky at first but once you get used to them somehow having a moving face makes the clothes come alive. Some of them even speak and sing to you and John Paul himself acts as a great introduction to the show. It is themed well from the classic Breton designs and Madonnas, though Parisian, punk and of course the classic corsets. There was also a good section on his muses and the models he has used including Andrej Pejic who modelled both male and female clothes for him.    The exhibition didn’t shy away from the sex appeal and empowerment of the clothes and he says himself of his first collection for men that he took as his inspiration the idea of making erotic clothes for men. It’s the first of these fashion exhibitions w...

Interesting talk at the Greenwich Heritage Centre given by Dr Sandra Dunster from the University of Greenwich. She went through what the towns would have looked and sounded like at various times and how they had evolved. I particularly like the idea of considering what a place would have sounded like ands she built this up from descriptions of the towns from people like Charles Dickens. There were some lovely maps and plans of the towns some showing little ships sailing up the river.  

Fascinating selling fair at the Royal Academy focusing on prints with stalls from a wonderful assortment of galleries. The prints ranged from fairly early ones such as some lovely Durer’s to contemporary work. As usual my favourites were from the early 20th century and in particularly there were some lovely ones by Nevinson, Nash and Duncan Grant. Of course there were a lot of World War I prints. I would love a piece of World War I art however the prices were telling me that I may need to wait until well after the anniversary! I was fascinated by the fact that in some cases prints by an artist were actually more expensive than drawings by them. I suppose because they are finished art works whereas drawings are often a work in progress but I would have expected a work directly by the hand of an artist would be dearer. I was interested to see prints which I have seen in recent exhibitions and realise that by buying prints (if you can afford them) you can own exhibition q...

Interesting display at the Wallace Collection looking at the 19th century fashion for reproducing French 18th century furniture. To do this it took a piece from its own collection made in 1776 and compared it to a reproduction of the piece made in about 1880. Oddly the earlier piece has the cruder construction because less attention was paid to what couldn’t be seen. However it’s decorative marquetry was much finer with some of the pieces engraved to enhance the detail. This furniture was not necessarily made to deceive but more likely because there was a fashion for the style creating a demand which couldn’t be met from originals.   I liked the way some of the detail such as cupboard doors were shown directly side by side and it was quite fun to try to guess which was which.